Nature and Heaven in the Xunzi: A Study of the Tian Lun (review)

Reviews 201 mined than ever before in challenging the proponents ofthe project. All of them have written copiously on this great controversy. Tb have added some of their writings would have enhanced the value of fhe book. AnoAier drawback to this work is Aiat Aie discussion of each issue is by someone from only one of Aie two camps. This leaves Aie reader wondering what the other side of the coin is on each issue. The editors' long introduction, together with Aie four appendixes, provides Aie Western audience with a much-needed background. These contain a wealth of data, difficult to find elsewhere in English publications. The statistical information , however, seems to end with 1989, and more important recent information is left out. The new data concerning the height of die dam, for instance, is not included . Some of the editors' analysis is rather elementary (e.g., their conclusions on p. 36). Occasionally translations seem awry (e.g., the name of an American economist, G. R. Paschal, was transliterated into "Pan Sui" on p. 43). Nevertheless , given current developments in China, the project is important enough to deserve attention in the Western world, and this book is a good beginning. The editors should be commended for their contribution to this continuing controversy ofvital importance. Liangwu Yin Mount Union College $ ® ® Edward J. Machie. Nature and Heaven in the Xunzi: A Study ofthe Tian Lun. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993. xiii, 224 pp. Hardcover $49.50, Paperback $16.95. This book provides a fully annotated translation of chapter 17 of the Xunzi and introduces and explains it with additional essays on such subjects as basic philosophical concepts and technical terms, textual history, the problems of translation , and the author's interpretation ofXunzi's thoughts. I found especially interesting fhe chapter titled "The Occasion and Argument of fhe Essay," in which fhe author outiines Aie main points and interpretative problems ofthe "Tian lun" and offers plausible portrayals of the historical, social, and intellectual circumstances© 1994 by University which might have led Xunzi to write the chapter. The book also includes endofHawai 'iPressnotes, a bibliography, and a useful index. The author's efforts, though admirable, are flawed by errors ofinterpretation and fact, and so his conclusions may be questioned. 202 China Review International: Vol. 1, No. 2, Fall 1994 I find misguided the author's attempts to deny that Xunzi meant by tian "nature " or "Aie natural realm" apart from the workings and concerns of human society and instead to find and emphasize instances of older conceptions of tian as a conscious being interested in political ethics and social order. Such an understanding of Xunzi's use of tian contradicts the chapter itself and is not supported by the major scholarship on the Xunzi. Once it is rejected there is littie else on which the auAior's overall interpretation of the "Tian lun" can stand. While fhere remain numerous points of fact and interpretation that are valuable and interesting, scattered among these are mistakes. The author is wrong to claim (as he does on p. 11 and elsewhere) that Aie Tang commentator Yang Liang "gives no indication of any predecessors" in annotating the text of the Xunzi. Yang's commentary is filled with references to and quotations of earlier commentaries . These references have been carefully studied and discussed by Japanese scholars, none of whose work is mentioned in fhe aufhor's bibliography. The author is also demonstrably wrong when he says (p. 83) that "initial gu indicates that what follows it is consequential to what precedes, not explanatory of it." Throughout fhe Xunzi are instances where gu introduces an assumption or statement of fact rather than a conclusion or consequence. Finally, one may argue with fhe author's translation as with all translations. Perhaps my strongest objection to this part of his work is occasioned by a translation (on p. 86) where his misunderstanding causes him, without scholarly foundation or precedent, to emend fhe text from de "get, succeed" to de "kindness, bestow ." The aufhor's rendering of the phrase bu qiu er de as "bestow(s) without being besought" is wrong. A better translation is "gets without seeking to do...